Sunday, November 23, 2014

A
PTI supporter I know on-line sent me the piece “An Ode to Fury”
by Fahd Husain in the Nov 19 Express Tribune, with the implication that the
fury discussed in this article justified the “revolution” being fomented by PTI
and PAT. The following is an extended version of my response, which may also
address critiques by others on my earlier piece, “The
Tragedy of Imran Khan and the Insafian Revolution”.

The
people of Pakistan have every right to be furious. They should be furious at
those who have led them for 67 years and have brought them to their current
state. But they should be even more furious at themselves for allowing this to
happen: for electing incompetent leaders when given the chance, and for
welcoming dictators with celebrations when they grew tired of those they had
elected; for their worship of personalities and their ignoring of institutions;
for buying into a toxic and bigoted ideology in the name of faith and
patriotism ; for teaching their children mythology dressed as history; and for
swallowing the propaganda of civilian and military governments without ever
checking for its veracity. The deaths of children in Thar is indeed an
incredible tragedy, but these children didn't just start dying this year; they've
been dying for decades - even centuries. It is a sad fact that the society
at large in that part of the world has not cared much for the plight of the
poor and the powerless. I'm glad that the people of Pakistan
are now furious about it, but will they respond by repenting of their own ways,
or will they again go looking for fantasy solutions peddled by snake oil salesmen
with big words and no ideas? As the poet Iqbal Azeem said eloquently:

badalnaa hae to rindoN say
kaho apnaa chalan badlayN

faqat
saaqi badal dayne se maekhaana na badlay gaa

(For
true change to happen, tell the drinkers to change their own ways; the tavern
will not change just by replacing the one serving the wine)

What
I see is that some people, furious at the country's conditions, are looking to
yet another savior running on the cult of personality. To the extent that Imran
Khan is embodying the justifiable fury of the Pakistani people, he is serving a
useful function. But history shows that those who embody such fury seldom, if
ever, turn out to be actual saviors, or even good leaders. The extreme examples of this are Hitler and Mussolini, both of whom expressed the real anger of people overreal problems in their countries, but in the end, created even greater problems. I do not
imply that Imran Khan is an extremist like these two, but his movement in its current manifestation does pose a real danger. A revolution driven by anger always leads first to incredible
horrors, as was seen in France, Russia, China, and, to some extent, in Iran. Only
in the long run do such revolutions move to their different outcomes – in most
cases, disillusionment. Once people are brought to a frenzy, they cannot be
controlled even by the leaders who led them there. The spark of fury that
ignites revolution turns easily into fires of vengeance and hate. Is that what
Pakistanis want? If so, Imran Khan is their man – though he should remember
that the first people such revolutions consume are often their own leaders.
And in almost all cases, the end result is not a democratic system, but a
strongman dictator.

However,
I am comforted by the fact that, while understandably furious, the people of
Pakistan are not in a revolutionary mood. Imran Khan can gather a few tens of
thousands - occasionally a few hundred thousand in large cities - for a
one-night stand with music and entertainment, but there is no ocean of humans
out in the streets of Pakistan day and night, as there was in Iran in 1978 or
in Egypt in 2011, even though neither revolution produced a particularly
desirable outcome in the short term. Most people still seem to understand that,
all said and done, Imran Khan is yet another politician promising the moon. And
they are strengthened in their opinion when they see the opportunists
surrounding Imran Khan, and his own feckless behavior. Gravitas, though much
ridiculed by those who lack it, is indeed an essential component of a true
leader's make-up. It is what gives them the dignity to command respect and
expect loyalty. Washington and Lincoln had it, Ataturk had it, Gandhi, Nehru
and Jinnah had it. Imran Khan, bless his heart, just doesn't. It is worth
noting that all the gentlemen I mentioned achieved far greater ends without
once resorting to the kind of personal insults and empty threats that issue
forth every night from the roof of the PTI container. Can anyone imagine Mohammad
Ali Jinnah or Mahatama Gandhi speaking in the idiom that Imran Khan, Shah
Mahmud Qureshi and Shaikh Rashid use? They were erudite, dignified and
hyper-intelligent individuals with the self-control and depth necessary in true
leaders. They spoke firmly and eloquently, but with civility; their ideas moved
not only their followers but also their foes by the force of their logic and
conviction, not by the use of locker-room trash-talk. Today, one can disagree
with their ideas, but no one can deny their stature – and this was apparent
even before they had succeeded in their causes.

I
think that the passionate defenders of Imran Khan conflate two distinct things.
The first is a justifiable feeling of frustration with the current order and
the desire to change it. The second is the belief that, because they are giving
voice to popular frustration, Imran Khan
and PTI are going to fix the problem. Unfortunately, the latter does not follow
automatically from the former. Just because your pain is real and someone gives
voice to it does not imply that they can heal it, or even have the first idea
of how to do so. Everything I have seen suggests to me that Imran Khan does not
have the knowledge, character, judgment or temperament to do what it will take.

In
the article, Fahd Husain says, “A state and a government that has lost
the ability to care, has lost the mandate to rule.” Perhaps so, but by these
standards has any government in Pakistan ever had a mandate to rule? And who
can say that those who rule post-revolution will truly care? If history is any
guide, the revolution will probably lead to an even less caring government by an
even less accountable group. I could be
wrong, of course ... and indeed, would be happy to be wrong. But at this point,
I can only modify Iqbal's words to say:

na Qadri meN ne Imran mayN
numood is kee

ye rooh apne badan kee
talaash mayN hae abhee

(neither Qadri nor Imran provide
what is needed; the spirit [of change] is still in search of a body it can
inhabit)

Saturday, November 8, 2014

Shama and Shahzad Masih were poor Christians who lived in the small village of Chak 59 in the Tehsil (subdivision) of Kot Radha Kishan near Lahore. It is not a remote area (though some orientalist in the BBC has managed to describe it as such), being a well developed center of the leather industry lcoated only 60 kilometers from the provincial capital of Lahore on a major national highway (and is the home of 2 former prime ministers of Pakistan!). Like many other poor people in their village, they worked as modern-day slaves in the local brick kiln. This, by the way, is not an exaggerated or poetic description of their employment status; bonded labor in brick kilns in India and Pakistan is internationally recognized as a type of modern slavery and involves many of the abuses known to us from books and movies about slaves in the days of yore.
The young couple had 4 children: Solomon (8) and Zeeshan (5) had been given to an uncle for adoption, probably due to the parent's poverty. Sonia (4) and Poonam (18mths) lived with them and Shama was pregnant again with her fifth child. Her father-in-law had died recently and a few days later Shama cleaned out his room and disposed of his old papers by burning them. He had been an "amil" (a folk healer) who used various religious texts in his amulets and suchlike, and the burnt papers apparently included some with arabic writing on them. Shama, who was illiterate and so could not read them in any case, burnt the lot and threw the remains on a nearby garbage heap.What happened next is best described in this report from World Watch Monitor (corroborated to me by a friend in the police as the best description of the event):

Tuesday, November 4, 2014

by Omar AliFirst published at 3quarksdaily.com
At about 6 pm on Sunday evening, a young suicide bomber (said to be 18 years old) blew himself up in a crowd returning from the testosterone-heavy flag lowering ceremony held every evening at the India-Pakistan border at Wagah, near Lahore.

Presumably this young man (a true believer, since a fake believer would find it hard to explode in such circumstances) had wanted to target the ceremony itself (usually watched by up to 5000 people every day, most of them visitors from out of town) but the military had received prior intelligence that something like this may happen and there were 6 checkpoints and he was unable to get to the ceremony, so he waited around the shops about 500 yards away from the parade site and exploded when he felt he had enough bodies around him to make it worth his while.
About 60 innocent people died. Many of them women and children. Including 8 women from the same poor family from a village in central Punjab who were visiting relatives in Lahore and decided to go to the parade (whether as entertainment, or as patriotic theater, or both). The bombing was instantly claimed by more than one Jihadist organization but it is possible that Ehsanullah Ehsan’s claim will turn out to be true. He said it was a reaction against the military’s recent anti-terrorist operation (operation Zarb e Azb: “blow of the sword of the prophet”), that his group wants "an Islamic system of government" and that they would attack infidel regimes on both sides of the Indian-Pakistani border.

The Indian authorities decided to suspend their side of the parade for the next three days. But on Monday evening, the Pakistani side decided to hold their parade as usual and a crowd was on hand. Cynics have pointed out that most of the “crowd” looked like soldiers in civilian clothes, but that is not fair. The “show of resilience” meme is a very ancient and well-developed meme and has solid credentials and should not be easily dismissed. I personally wish both India and Pakistan end this ridiculous ceremony someday (soon), but on this particular occasion a show of resilience was the smart move. But then, the respected corps commander of the Pakistani army corps in Lahore, General Naveed Zaman (an outstanding officer, himself on the Taliban’s hit list for his role in various anti-terrorist operations) made a statement and beat his chest a bit about how we are a brave nation, we are back the next day and “look, on the Indian side it’s like a snake has sniffed them”, the implication being, they are cowards, they didn’t show up, but look at us, we are back and we are strong.
This is par for the course for the Pakistani army (whose propaganda software was designed and built for only one enemy, and whose soldiers are motivated to attack Jihadi terrorists by being told that the Jihadists are all Indian agents, I am not kidding) but is still telling: the day after one of the biggest massacres of civilians by a Jihadist terrorist bomber (there being no other kinds in our area these days, though the Tamil Tigers showed that a Tamil Hindu version is indeed possible, and in fact preceded the adoption of this particular weapon by Islamist terrorists) the senior army officer in the region could only taunt the Indians across Eastern border.
Meanwhile, in Nigeria, the Boko Haram terrorists announced that most of the 276 girls they kidnapped have been “converted to Islam” and married off. So the matter is settled.

And in Iraq, the “Islamic State” has been buying and selling captured Yezidi girls as slaves in the best medieval Arab tradition. In the video below, the young men of IS can be seen joking about the topic (the translation is by Jenan Moussa, an Arab journalist, not by MEMRI, so discerning viewers can view it without violating any of the standard guidelines):

Boko Haram has also gone ahead and blown up some Shias in Nigeria as they commemorated Moharram, while their fans have apparently shot a Shia in the face in, of all places, Sydney.
My point is this: the Salafist-Jihadist meme, so carefully nurtured and brought together in the Afghan-Pakistan border region by Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the US in the 1980s, is now global and will soon come to your neighborhood if your neighborhood happens to be in the core Islamicate territories of the Middle East, India, Southeast Asia, Londonistan or Mississauga. Many different narratives about this phenomenon are in the market, ranging from Neocon propaganda and Fox News to Islamist apologetics and Marxist “class-based analysis”. For Western and Westernized liberals of a particular disposition, there are also “commentators” like Pankaj Mishra, who can be relied upon to press all the politically correct buttons without committing to anything resembling a coherent description, prediction or prescription. I would like to add some random thoughts to this mélange:

1. We are all human beings. And in the great Eurasian landmass, we have been mixing, biologically and culturally, for thousands of years. It is not possible that a relatively recent religious movement (Islam) has somehow significantly altered the biology of the people involved. This is a trivial observation, but some people on both sides of the liberal-conservative divide seem to have some misapprehensions about this, so it is worth reiterating. Going beyond that, I would add that even as a cultural phenomenon, Islam is not from some other planet. It evolved within pre-existing cultures, borrowing and altering already existing cultural memes. Much of “Islamic history” is the history of an initial (very successful and very extensive) Arab conquest, followed by some further conquests (primarily in Central Asia and India) by Islamicized Turkic invaders. Only in Indonesia and Malaysia did the initial wave arrive as traders and the subsequent conquests and conversions were almost entirely the work of local converts. This makes early South East Asian Islam a bit of an outlier, but that is another story. Only by disregarding most of history can we regard these conquests (and their associated missionary activities) as somehow completely unique. There are some peculiar features of Islamicate civilization, but not as many as its fans or its detractors would like to claim.
2. That being said, Islamicate civilization developed a remarkable degree of consensus on it’s core doctrines in the Islamic heartland. Even Shias and Sunnis converged on similarities in daily life and communal attitudes towards non-Muslims, towards women, towards apostasy, towards blasphemy, towards the notion of holy war. While agreeing with Razib Khan’s views about the relative unimportance of theology in general, I think modern life and the recent experience of colonization, decolonization and its associated psychopathologies have led to an unusual situation in the Islamicate world: while the pressures that cause religious revivalist movements or “fundamentalist” movements may be similar in non-Muslim communities (hence Sikh, Hindu and Buddhist identity-based semi-fascist fundamentalist movements), the material that is available to these movements and the historical background of the religions involved, makes it difficult to associate a detailed “shariah” with any of those movements. Sikhs can ban tobacco and kill blasphemers and traitors, Buddhist mobs can kill Muslims without compunction in Myanmar and Sri Lanka, Hindu nationalists ban beef and carry out pogroms, but the notion of a Sikh state or a Hindu state or a Buddhist state is mostly the notion of a state where their co-religionists hold sway (or even hold exclusive title), but lacks consensus on any well developed legal code or even theology. This is not the case with Islam.
3. There is such a legal and theological framework in Islam and it has wide support in principle. In principle is, of course, not the same as in practice. Most Muslims know as much about Muslim theology as Christians know about Christian theology, which means they know very little. But because of widespread beliefs about blasphemy and apostasy, this “in principle” support translates into an inability to frontally challenge those who come armed with more detailed Islamic knowledge. For example, most Pakistanis may have no idea that classical Islamic law permits slave girls to be captured, used for sex (without marriage) and bought and sold as desired. If and when IS comes to Pakistan and wants to talk about buying and selling slave girls, most people will probably be shocked. It is possible that most people will initially even find some way to say this is wrong. But it is also my guess that when face to face with an IS ideologue, most people will be unable to argue for too long. Because he will have classical Islamic texts on his side and his opponent will have nothing beyond his human intuition of fairness and good behavior. Intuition will not stand against argument. And there will probably be no argument for too long because to argue too much would cross over into the zone of blasphemy. And most people (except maybe for the tiny sliver educated in Western or Western-style universities and out of touch with their own traditions almost completely) believe that blasphemers should be punished, and at least for the most extreme kinds of blasphemy, the punishment should be death. This, by the way, is just a simple empirical fact, easily checked if you step out among the people in that region.
4. Whenever the existing state order (in almost all cases, the product of recent Russian or West European colonization, so somewhat suspect in any case) falls apart, the next common denominator tends to be Islamist. And among those Islamists, the ways of the golden age are not some distant myth. Those books are still around, still honored, still relevant, still protected against criticism by blasphemy and apostasy memes. And those books include rules for holy war, for slave holding,for female legal inequality etc. that are no longer fashionable in the modern world. That is just how things happen to be.
5. The ruling elites in most Islamicate countries are not Islamist in practice and may not be so in principle either. But having taken the path of least resistance (or having received their Islam from Karen Armstrong or post-Marxist theorists) they have acquiesced in the glorification of medieval Islamicate norms, not as past history but as guides to present behavior. They will now be (literally in many cases) hoist on their own petard.
6. Elements of the ruling elite (especially in South Asia, where penetration of Western postcolonialist/postmodern/post-Marxist garbage has been most extensive within the elite) are vigorously opposed to many of these medieval norms, but have disappeared into an alternate universe where only White people have agency and therefore only White people are responsible for all events. This has effectively taken them out of the equation for now. They remain mostly harmless, but the opportunity cost of their withdrawal into la la land is not insignificant.
7. As the Bill Maher-Ben Affleck affair has shown, Western Liberals are generally clueless about Islamic history and the status of (most of) the Islamicate world with regard to issues like freedom of religion, freedom of speech, feminism and suchlike. This is NOT to endorse a particular Whiggish vision of history as the only valid path, with every community situated somewhere along the timeline from barbarian to Western liberal democracy. But it is to emphasize that opting out of this linear timeline is one thing, pretending that everyone is already at point X on the timeline while paying lip-service to multiculturalism is another. If Ben Affleck thinks that Western standards of “liberal democracy” (however defined and whether regarded as an endpoint or not) are not to be applied to everyone on the globe and that these standards are being used to demonize and colonize those who hold to different values and models, then he has a leg to stand on. But he (or others like him) seem to lose this admirable level of “nuance” when they get to specifics. Instead of saying that Pakistani Muslims do not permit free speech when it comes to X, Y and Z and who are we to comment or interfere(especially when we are just using this commentary to justify our invasion of this or that country), they are saying “there is no real difference in free speech norms between X and the US”, which is patently absurd. Other liberals (too numerous to list) will look at history as if European powers have real histories (with colonization, oppression, invasions, decimations etc, also with progress, emancipation, democracy, etc.) and everyone else lived on some other static planet with no history, no past and no future. I don’t have to go into detail, Wikipedia can solve this issue for anyone these days, but it is still surprising how few people will bother to even read Wikipedia before brandishing absurdities in this matter. The opportunity cost for this (loss of some Western liberals) is perhaps insignificant in real life, but since I tend to interact with some of these (very nice) people, I obsessively comment about them. Hence this comment.
8. More after I get some feedback; many or most of these comments are very likely to be misinterpreted by many people. This is partly because I am not a good enough writer, but partly because all of us use various heuristics to slot every commentator into pre-existing boxes. To see a little of where I am coming from, some of the following articles may be helpful. Thank you.http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/10/the-roots-of-the-islamic-states-appeal/382175/

Monday, November 3, 2014

Looking back at Pakistan’s history over the last forty
years, he represented the country’s best opportunity to transform itself from a
third-world kleptocracy to a modern democracy, which is why the failure of
Imran Khan and his revolution is such a tragedy. I do not mean to imply that he
has failed in narrow political terms: It is much too early to say that, and I
would not be surprised to see him as Prime Minister of Pakistan in the near
future. What has failed, rather, is the vision that he had once promised. It
has been tainted irredeemably by his alliances with obscurantist forces like
the Jamaat-e-Islami, his rationalization
of Taliban extremism, his willingness
to act as the instrument of anti-democratic forces, his poor judgment of
character, his limited
grasp of history, his opportunistic
embrace of bigotry, and his inability to organize his movement into a
meaningful force rather than a rabble of unthinking acolytes. Ultimately, Imran
Khan’s revolution has been limited by its leader’s inability to transcend the
limitations of his own character. At one level, this is just a tragedy, but at
another, it is an unforgivable betrayal because, by promising gold and
delivering dirt, Imran Khan has set back the cause of true reform and
strengthened the very forces he had originally wished to counteract. Many of
his supporters are delighted that he has weakened the current government, which
they see as corrupt and illegitimate, and indeed he has. But this government
represents only one aspect of the rot in Pakistani society – and not even the
most salient one. What Imran Khan’s actions have really weakened is the
institution of democracy in Pakistan.

Among the factors that have brought Pakistan to where it is
today, corrupt politicians may be the most visible, but are certainly not the
most significant. They are the scavengers picking at the corpse, not the
original killers. The true source of Pakistan’s problems are the forces that,
over the country’s entire history, have not allowed the institutions of
governance and socioeconomic organization to establish themselves, and have
precluded the emergence of a stable social contract between the state and its citizens.
These forces are given many names – “the Establishment”, “the Deep State”, “farishtay”
(angels), “secret agencies”, etc. – but the only thing certain about them is
that they pervade all aspects of the state. Corrupt politicians are, at best,
servants and enablers of these forces – a symptom, not the cause, so to speak.
And this is reflected in the fact that, while the political system in Pakistan
has been extremely unstable since the country’s inception, the ideological
orientation of the country has been remarkably stable, and has moved only in
one direction. This is evident in the policies towards India and Afghanistan,
the Kashmir issue, the nurturing of extremism as a geopolitical weapon, the untouchability
of the military-industrial complex, the use of the educational system as an
instrument of ideology, the suppression of civil society and civil rights, the
dehumanization of minorities, and – above all – in the periodic disruption of
the democratic system.

Democracy is a fragile thing and does not come naturally to
humans. Its success in the West and the East has depended on being given the
space and time to establish itself. Good democracy – if it arises at all – requires
many generations to take root, and is often preceded by decades of poor, imperfect,
corrupt and just plain bad democracy. Those decades of bad democracy are
absolutely necessary for the ultimate emergence of good democracy, which
explains why the latter has never occurred in Pakistan. Every time the
democratic experiment begins and takes its natural imperfect course, a possibly
well-meaning “reformer” upends it in the name of bringing order, thus resetting
everything to square one, which is where the process starts again after a period
of political stasis. There is no time for democracy to establish itself, and
for true reformers to emerge from within
the system, which is the only way the system can ever be reformed. And this
brings us back to the tragedy and betrayal in Imran Khan’s revolution. His
diagnosis of what ails Pakistan, while partial, was (and remains) correct: The
democracy that exists now is terrible. As the leader of the second most
powerful party in the Parliament, and the party in power in one of the four
provinces, Imran Khan the reformer had a golden opportunity to begin exactly
the kind of “reform from within” that Pakistani democracy needs. However, such
a process would take time – years and decades of bad but slowly improving
democracy, if the reformers could persevere. It is quite likely that, while he
would begin it, Imran Khan would not be the one to complete the process. And
this is where his character was tested and found wanting. Like many would-be
reformers, Imran Khan obviously believes that he, and only he, can accomplish what is needed. It is a delusion common in
the leadership business, but is seldom warranted. In this case, realizing that
he was already nearing “retirement age”, Imran Khan chose to short-cut the
process and to attack the system from the outside. The claim is often made (by
his supporters) that he first spent a year – a whole year! – demanding reforms
within the system, as if a process that requires decades can be judged on the
results of a few months of half-hearted noise-making! I have no insider
knowledge of who – if anyone – pushed him towards adopting this course, but it
is obvious who benefited from it: The forces that do not wish to see the
institutions of democratic government stabilize. Whether he has weakened the
PML-N government or not, he has done incalculable damage to these institutions,
which represent whatever future Pakistan might have. That is his greatest
betrayal … but it isn’t all.

Imran Khan emerged upon the political scene as a widely
admired sportsman, a determined fighter, a dedicated philanthropist and, above
all, an honest man. He is still all these things, though the last attribute
must perhaps be qualified now to apply only to financial matters. Those who followed
him enthusiastically and those, like myself, who wished him well with some
caution, all hoped that he would transform the social and political landscape
of Pakistan with a thoughtful, well-organized and systematic movement. What has
emerged instead is empty sloganeering, shallow thinking and dangerous
impatience. One would expect the leader of a true reform movement to surround
himself with thinkers, intellectuals, technocrats and organizers – people who
know, understand, think and act with judgment. Instead, Imran Khan is
surrounded by rank opportunists of little expertise but grandiose ambitions,
the refuse of the same system that he seeks to overthrow. One common theme that
unites them is their reluctance to criticize their leader and their willingness
to rationalize his most absurd actions. And there have been plenty of these.
One may recall the exhortation to
transfer money from abroad using a “hawala” scheme that violated
international law, or the ridiculous (and counterproductive)
edict
to stop paying tax and utility bills, or forcing all his party’s members to
resign from Parliament (much to
their chagrin). No prominent leader in the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) –
with the exception of the now departed Javed Hashmi – has dared to criticize these
ideas as impossible, counter-productive or both, though many of them must surely
know this. However, they also know the boundless narcissism of their leader who
cannot abide criticism any more now than he could when he was captain of the
cricket team. A little autocracy was not bad for Pakistan cricket, but it is
poison for national governance!

The party created by Imran Khan – the PTI – should have been
a haven for rational, thoughtful Pakistanis who could change the country
through the force of their ideas and their exemplary behavior. That has always been
the key to reform: Ideas and character. Instead, he has created a party characterized
by paranoia, demagoguery, defensiveness and abusiveness.
Every untoward event is quickly attributed by the party faithful to vast
international and domestic conspiracies, variously involving the US, India,
Israel, internal traitors, former judges and generals, government
functionaries, and Fakhroo Bhai’s lack of spine. Whatever befalls the PTI is
always someone else’s fault – the Dear Leader never makes a mistake. When – in spite
of many
irregularities – the 2013 elections were deemed
to be generally fair, and the results turned out to be almost exactly what all
serious pollsters – as opposed to PTI kool-aid drinkers – had predicted,
the response was to serially blame officials and politicians at every level. Every
journalist who criticizes PTI policies is immediately deemed a “dollar-khor” “lifafa
journalist” traitor on the take from nefarious entities. Anyone who dares
to challenge Imran Khan’s “ideas” is labeled a bully, traitor, pervert, and
worse. The picturesque language that issues forth from the social media
accounts of PTI youth is just an amplified reflection of the attitudes implicit
in their leader’s rhetoric – the same lack of decorum, the
same inability to accept criticism, the same alacrity in blaming everything on
others, and the same lack of prior thought. The river of incoherence, factual
errors, empty threats and false predictions that has issued forth from the roof
of the PTI container on D-Chowk would long ago have drowned any rational
political movement, but froth floats even in a flood.

Then leaving aside style, let us turn to substance. Through
2012 and 2013, as Pakistan was engulfed in violence perpetrated by jihadi
Taliban, Imran Khan and his party kept up a
steady drumbeat of apologetics for the extremists, calling them “our
alienated brothers” and suggesting
they open offices in Pakistani cities. To be sure, the PML-N of Nawaz
Sharif was no better on this, though the two differed slightly in their choice
of preferred extremist outfits. However, this was a much more problematic
position for a party supposedly championing reform. When it came time to form a
government in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province, PTI forged an alliance with
the mother-ship of religious obscurantism and political thuggery in Pakistan,
the Jamaat-e-Islami.
They were given only two ministeries, but one of them was education - an area fraught
with ideological conflict. Predictably, the need to mollify Islamist coalition
partners has resulted in devastating
changes to the educational curriculum in KP. PTI still does not dare to
criticize Islamist militants as terrorists. Even as I write this, PTI mouthpieces
are out on social media and TV news shows trying to deflect the blame for yesterday’s
deadly blast at Wahgah away from the Taliban (who have already claimed
responsibility) and towards India. One has to ask: Whom is this benefiting? And
once we have an answer to this question, many things will become magically
clearer.

I am often asked why
I am so adamantly opposed to Imran Khan’s leadership if I think he is not
corrupt and means well (I do). Why not give him a chance as opposed to the
corrupt lot currently in power? My answer is that, given the stakes, I prefer corrupt,
incompetent opportunists to committed, single-minded ideologues. The former are
not harmless, but are incapable of being truly dangerous, because the success
of their “business” depends on the system’s survival. The latter scare me
because they are the type who would gladly burn a village to save it. I fear that Imran Khan today is unleashing forces within Pakistani politics that even he will not be able to control in the future, and sadly, they are mainly destructive ones.

In the hard-fought
and bitter American presidential election of 1960, more than 68 million
votes were cast nationwide, and John F. Kennedy won by only 112,827 votes – 0.165%
of all the votes cast – and winning only 23 states to Nixon’s 26. It was
well-known that Mayor Richard Daley’s “machine” in Chicago had conjured up
thousands of questionable votes, including votes from dead people. The state of
Texas was delivered by JFK’s running mate, Lyndon Johnson, by means still
shrouded in mystery. Yet, that most greedy of politicians, Richard Nixon,
accepted defeat with grace and left the field to his opponent, living to fight
another day. Then in the election
of 2000, the Democratic nominee, Al Gore, actually won half a million more
votes than his opponent, George W. Bush, and clearly should have won the state
of Florida – and thus the Presidency – had all votes been counted properly.
However, the US Supreme Court, with a majority of Republican judges – including
three appointed by Candidate Bush’s father or President Reagan (when Bush Sr.
was Vice-President) – arbitrarily stopped the recount and delivered the
Presidency to George W. Bush. Many urged Gore to challenge this, but he stepped
aside gracefully to show respect for the system. This is how mature leaders
behave. In both cases, the losers’ supporters (myself included, in the case of
Al Gore) gnashed their teeth and stamped their feet in frustration, but no one
talked of overthrowing the government. Contrast this with the behavior of the
Republican ideologues after 1994, who ended up impeaching Bill Clinton, or the
even more reckless ideologues of today’s Tea Party, who have repeatedly brought
the US government to the brink of disaster because of their personal hatred for
President Obama. In this, and in too many other things, the party created by
Imran Khan resembles the Tea Party of today and the ideologues of 1994: The
same unwillingness to listen to contrary facts, the same paranoid conspiracy
theories, the same indiscriminately abusive language towards critics, and –
most sadly – the same preference for ideology over Reason. The PTI has become
the party of “you’re with us or against us”, the party that trusts its gut feelings
more than objective facts, and the party that seeks to “reform” the system by
demolishing it. For all his claims of being an honest reformer, Imran Khan has
turned out to be yet another well-meaning authoritarian wannabe – albeit in
civilian clothes for a change.